The Ondo State High Court in Akure has ordered the state government to pay 30 million naira in compensation to a commercial motorcyclist whose leg was shot by the state’s safety net agency code-named Amotekun.
The motorcyclist, Oluwarotimi Oluwasegun, said in his lawsuit that Amotekun’s men shot him in the Araromi area of Akure, the capital of Ondo state, on August 9, 2021, resulting in the amputation of his left leg by approximately one month later.
Oluwarotimi Oluwasegun with relatives and their lawyers after the sentence was handed down in Akure on Thursday.
Determined to get justice, Mr. Oluwasegun, 36, through his lawyer, Tope Temokun, sued the Ondo State government in the High Court.
Handing down judgment on the lawsuit on Wednesday, Judge Omolara Adejumo awarded N30 million against the Ondo state government and the Amotekun Bodysaid the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Temokun, in a statement he shared with PREMIUM TIMES.
“In awarding this sum, the court condemned in the strongest terms the applicant’s (Mr. Oluwasegun) unlawful shooting in the leg which led to the amputation of his leg,” stated Mr. Temokun.
Mr. Temokun filed the lawsuit on behalf of his client on October 28, 2022, more than a year after the incident occurred.
The attorney said he filed the lawsuit after receiving a response from the state government on October 26, 2022, to his complaint letter, alleging that his client was arrested while Amotekun officers were on the trail of kidnapping and robbery suspects. navy.
He had said that it was evil to link his client to such crimes.
It urged the court to hold that “the shooting, torture and abandonment of the applicant by the officers of the defendants constitute a shocking violation of the applicant’s right to personal dignity.”
Mr. Temokun sought, among other sentences, an order that the Ondo State government and the other defendants pay him 50 million naira “as general damages” and another 50 million naira as “exemplary damages”, which which totals 10 million naira “for the violation of the applicant’s right to personal dignity”.
Mr. Temokun held that Mr. Oluwasegun deserved “compensatory damages for the violation of his fundamental right to personal dignity.”
The Okada rider, as commercial motorcyclists are popularly called, sued for compensation of N100 million in the Ondo State High Court in Akure.
How Oluwasegun was shot
Mr. Oluwasegun, the father of two boys, Samuel, 9, and Oluwadarasimi, 6, said that Amotekun officers attacked him between 8 and 9 am on August 9, 2021 in Akure.
In court documents, he recounted that a passenger had just gotten off his motorcycle in a neighborhood of Araromi, Akure, when Amotekun’s truck suddenly veered toward him off the side of the road and the occupants began shooting into the air as the vehicle He stopped.
He said that the people around, frightened by the shots, fled, but he backed down.
“I did not run because I assumed the officers were carrying out their legitimate duties and furthermore when I did nothing incriminating that would justify me fleeing in full view of the Amotekun officers,” he wrote in his affidavit of support.
Surprised that he did not run away like the others, four men from Amotekun, Oluwasegun said, “came out of the truck, accosted me and, to my surprise, started harassing and beating me.”
He said he was still struggling to understand the situation when one of Amotekun’s officers “fired a shot in my leg with the rifle that was strapped to his neck.”
The men then dragged him into the back of their truck and took him to Amotekun’s headquarters in Alagbaka, where they later abandoned him, Oluwasegun said.
In his office, according to the claimant, he was left outside without care, until a superior officer came out and ordered him to be taken to the team’s medical unit.
At the Amotekun medical unit, he said, the nurses only bandaged the gunshot wound and referred him to the Federal Medical Center (FMC), Owo, “for immediate treatment of the leg.”
The Okada cyclist recounted how Amotekun’s men drove him roughly to Owo, his fractured thigh “barely hanging by the flesh” for 45 minutes that seemed “like 45 years” of pain.
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He said he was treated for just 24 hours when he found out on Tuesday, August 10, 2021, the day after the incident, that the hospital’s medical staff had gone on strike.
“This was the end of any significant medical care the leg received at FMC Owo,” he said.
Without further attention, the condition of the wound worsened and the leg began to smell bad and began to decompose, leading to amputation.